The Martians have arrived!

[frogdeth]

For those who were there you already know the story of the "Bofors Incident" last week. For the rest of you...

A while ago there we (Allies) were trying to finish off a town and had numerous tanks in the AB to camp it. Amongst the chaos a bofors spawned. No problem, six different tanks immediately open fire with their machineguns all at once and buried the bofors crew in bullet hole sprites. Problem solved, right? Wrong.

Bofors continues to roll out the vehicle spawn. We think nothing of it at first, assuming it's just despawn delay, though a few people continued to shoot at it. The bofors finally comes to a stop and begins to deploy. A chorus of WTFs and the tanks again open fire on it, hitting the crew with several hundred more rounds of machinegun fire from multiple direction. That had to kill it, right? Oh come on now, you know the answer already, don't you?

The bofors then begins to open fire, blowing up one Souma-35 right off the bat and tearing the crap out of the rest of the tanks. Now everyone in the AB is firing at this dang bofors, which continues to whirl around and fire it's 40mm autocannon at everyone around it. Everyone around it keeps firing at the bofors.

About three minutes, several thousand rounds of ammo and who knows how many reports filed* or so later it finally despawns. Less than a minute later, guess who immediately respawns as another bofors? The entire situation repeats itself. And again. And again.

(* - Filing reports between 2am-6am EST when no Rats are even awake, let alone online, is kind of like writing letters to Santa Claus.)

Weird, right? They say death trigger was fixed long ago but I never really believed it. Anyway, I figured it was an isolated incident and brushed it aside into the small mountain of weird, unexplainable things that happen in the game.

Then the other night I was outside a town in a Matilda. After losing my tracks (as is prone to happen) a Pak38 began to wheel it's way into range. Having spotted it early, I quickly began spraying bullets at it. Then I realized that's kind of pointless due to borked damage models so I did the smart thing and nailed it in the gunshield with my 2pdr. Pak38 stops and deploys. Nail it again. Pak38 begins firing. Being a lousy shot it took him over a dozen rounds to get the range right and nuke my Matilda (Eh, it happens - I have no delusions about the Matilda being impervious to Pak38 fire) but not before I managed to plant at least six direct hits into his gunshield with my 2pdr. AP rounds, in case you were wondering. And he just kept on firing. CSR showed that I had, in fact, killed him. Death, however, was apparently not enough to keep him from returning fire for over two minutes straight. This caused me to think back to the "bofors incident" and wonder what the heck was going on here?

If it's not some kind of weird death trigger thing then it must be lag. After all, we've all had plenty of simultaneous kill situations that were separated by a second or two. Hey, it's an international game, there's going to be some lag. I can live with that (if only because I can't change it without first becoming a deity) - these things happen. But over a minute of lag delay to make someone drop? Two minutes? Three minutes?

Could it be someone on a satellite feed? It's possible, but even they don't have that kind of lag. Then the answer hit me. I was looking in the right direction, just not far enough. There is a place where someone could, in fact, generate themselves a good three minutes of lag in which to keep on fighting even after taking enough damage to kill a six-ton cockroach...

We Welcome our new Martian Overlords!

[echelon4]

GD IT ! OF Course!

[lickingya]

You're sure? I tought it was moonkind people O_o

[imded]

No farking WAY!? Wow, smacks self in forehead.

Prostrates in front of our new leaders.

'Oh, GREAT and WONDERFUL, GRAND POOPENTATES, we surrender.'

[legear]

This has also happended to me, i have done .reports and also posted in these very forums about it. I have slammed numerous paks with 8-9 AP rounds, and most times i get the kill, but he can still deploy, look around, realize he is being blasted from an allied tank just meters away, and shoot me and kill me. Happens almost everyday i play.

[soRaz]

It doesnt Sound Like a connection issue.

When i play using my iPhone As a hotspot, i sometimes get minute long lagspikes due to bad coverage.

During that time I Can see and navigate the World In a matrix Like state, but my movement Is ignored when connection resumes and i warp back to where i was and no hits are registered.

This is with netcode2. it sometimes tells mé its downgrading to netcode1

When this happens and i lose connection the screen freezes

[elegance]

Ping higher than 500ms for 3 minutes = automatic disconnect. 3 times within 15 minutes = automatic disconnect for 1 hour. Broadband is a minimum requirement anyway since 1.31, lets extend it to ping times (and packet loss?).

[berlinee]

SWEET! GJ Axis players! Keel S35's with Bofors. Awesome!

[ratatosk]

SWEET! GJ Axis players! Keel S35's with Bofors. Awesome!

I wondered about that, didn't think it was possible. But there have been 3 such kills this campaign and another 976 in all the rest of history.

I guess the lesson is don't run around with the hatch on the back of the turret open? Or don't let yourself get double tracked? hah.

[GOPHUR]

What was the players name? Does anyone have an AAR I can look at?